The former president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, has been convicted of plotting a military coup.

Three out of five Supreme Court justices found the 70-year-old guilty of leading a conspiracy aimed at keeping him in power after he lost the 2022 election to his left-wing rival, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

While the plot failed to enlist enough support from the military to go ahead, it did culminate in the storming of government buildings by Bolsonaro’s supporters on 8 January 2023, the justices found.

One justice acquitted Bolsonaro and a final one is yet to vote, but the simple majority is enough to convict the former president, who could now face decades in jail. He will be sentenced on Friday.

The former president’s fate was sealed on Thursday when Justice Carmén Lúcia cast her vote.

She found him guilty on all the five charges: attempting to stage a coup, leading an armed criminal organisation, attempted violent abolition of the democratic rule of law, and two more charges related to the damage of property during the storming of buildings in Brasília on 8 January 2023.